Rudolf Stember
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Rudolf Stember is a German composer and sound designer best known on the Amiga and later at Factor 5.
As a kid, Stember played soccer with his neighbor. At school, he was not very good at music, which he thinks was because children never obey teachers. As of 2002, he still could not "properly" read traditional notation.
Stember's school had computers like the Apple II. He first programmed using BASIC on another friend's Sinclair ZX81 and played games on the neighbor's Commodore 64. He then saved enough for a low-end VIC 20, but the neighbor advised he doesn't want that. So, quite like his later friend Chris Hülsbeck, in 1984, Stember got a bit of money from his grandmother at the last minute. In 1987, he saved enough for a brand-new Amiga 500. On both computers, he made graphics and music for fun. On the C64, both Stember brothers and their eight friends developed demos as Argon and showed them at the monthly computer party in Venlo, The Netherlands.
One day, Walter Konrad of Double Density and CP Verlag encouraged Argon to make games. Rudolf Stember decided to try and created Decton (C64). Immediately successful, he bought his first sampler, a Yamaha TX16W, and his excited friends founded a game development group, Cyberstyle. Still the only one who could make music, Rudolf Stember gave up programming and built a studio.
In 1990, Cyberstyle pitched The Curse of RA to a major publisher, Rainbow Arts, where Stember befriended Chris Hülsbeck and became a freelancer when Hülsbeck was busy. He further freelanced for Moonlight, The Art Department (later phenomedia), and Factor 5, who were getting into Nintendo games.
On 1996-05-19, Stember emigrated to San Rafael, California, USA, to take his first full-time job: audio director at Factor 5. Ever since, music is a hobby again. He instead recorded, created and archived sound effects for games such as Star Wars and Lair. He also bought a car from his birth year, that became the mascot of Factor 5 and an easter egg in their Star Wars games.
Rudolf Stember returned to North Rhine-Westphalia in 2016 and is an associate producer at Epic Games. His younger brother is taking care of their old Commodore computers.
Contents
Audio Development
Amiga
On his first four games, Stember arranged using Soundtracker. Through The Curse of RA (AMI), he switched to TFMX-Editor. He did not mind the four-channel limit, but found the hard panning useless and often mixed the output to mono.
Commodore 64
Stember started arranging C64 music using Soundmonitor, but found it too slow. As The Holy Grail of Argon, he arranged using Future Composer V1.0 and V2.0. Five of these songs were later remade for five Commodore games. By then, he was composing melodies and figuring out harmonies on a Yamaha YS100 synthesizer. Next, he chose a flavor such as light-hearted or heavy metal.
Game music, he mainly arranged using Soundmaster v3.1. Some Cyberstyle programmer modified the driver to allow speed-up, fading, and relocation. Rudolf Stember does not remember and probably did not need to know in the first place. On The Tower of Terror (C64), Audio Effect Editor was used, which, like the game, was programmed by Argon groupmate Alex Kirsch. Both music editors were published by CP Verlag on Golden Disk 64 issue 6.
Stember used SID's unstable low-pass filter on most bass channels. In VICE 3.9, they sound best with C64 PAL and a bias of around -20, though how close it is to Stember's SID chip(s) is unconfirmed.
DOS
Stember arranged using the same TFMX implementations as Hülsbeck: Initially, the AWS and MDT formats for the Ad Lib Music Synthesizer Card, and finally, the original Amiga driver ported to Sound Blaster.
SNES
Stember used the TROET SoundSystem by Factor 5.
Gameography
Picture Gallery
Unknown source. Different cut in Amiga Games SH 1/94.
Summer 2000. His website.
Circa 2007. Making of Lair (PS3).
Stember's studio. Circa 2007.
2016. Posted by himself on MobyGames.
Unknown source.
Links
- mobygames.com/person/9237/rudolf-stember/ - MobyGames.
- facebook.com/rudolf.stember/ - Facebook.
- instagram.com/rudolfstember/ - Instagram.
- linkedin.com/in/rudolf-stember - LinkedIn.
- web.archive.org/web/20030127083020/http://www.homepages.at/webrainbows/html-version/stember.html - Interview from 2002-10-10 (in German).
- kultboy.com/Rudolf-Stember-Interview/52/ - Transcript of audio interview from 2019-03-01 (in German).
- youtube.com/watch?v=itNcZsTKk9A - Video interview from 2020-10-03.
